Lesbian Apologetics: Lesson 1 - Interpreting the Bible

The Bible is read by people all over the planet. They come from all sorts of languages and cultures and they each have a view of the world. One thing is for certain, though. When someone reads it, they will have 1 of 2 viewpoints:

1. They interpret the Bible in literal terms. They believe that each and every word as presented in its current format are the words of God, written down by men as the Holy Spirit inspired them.

OR

2. They interpret the Bible within the historical and cultural contexts. They consider when the texts were written, the place, the cultural norms, etc, and see how what they are reading fits within those parameters.

The first one is the easy one because you can say, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” No thinking involved. The problem is, even these people don’t really accept everything as literal. They pick and choose what is convenient for them or they will create a systematic theology that allows them to claim it’s the perfect and inerrant word of God while allowing themselves to ignore many Biblical mandates.

Here are a few examples:

• In Matthew 5:27-30, Jesus teaches: "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”

My question is this: Where are all of the eye-less, hand-less, penis-less, literal interpreters (LI’s)? Why do they not adhere to Jesus’ remedy for sin? Because they realize that he is making the point not to take sin lightly so as to allow yourself to get into tempting situations. Jesus doesn’t want people to maim their bodies. He wants people to treat each other well.

• In 1 Timothy 2:11-14, the apostle Paul instructs: “I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes” How many literal interpreters violate Paul’s instruction? (And, on a side note, Paul was very good about saying “I don’t allow this, I don’t allow that.” - He is stating his personal preference, yet people take it as a mandate from God.)

(Jessica Alba - a filthy sinner?) Photo: Getty Images

The reason we see LI’s wearing braided hair, jewelry and costly garments is because they have been taught that the reason they can ignore these verses is because that in Paul’s day, a woman who dressed like that was a prostitute.

Is that a cultural filter that I smell? Because in our culture, a woman like that is normal and a woman like Paul describes is Amish.

Paul also says that women should remain silent in the church. But how many churches would not survive without women teaching Sunday school or in various office and volunteer positions where they not only speak, but also give instruction. This one gets ignored because there are not enough men who will get off the couch to study enough to teach. Churches today ignore Paul’s mandate because the backbone of their empires are built on the the free labor of these strong, insightful and giving women.

How do they explain this to their puppets? They tell them that Paul really meant that women should not ask questions at church, but instead go to their husbands. It also means that women can serve fo sho - just not in any leadership capacity. In other words, "we want your blood, sweat and tears, just not your opinions. We tell you what to do and you quietly obey so you can go to Heaven, okay, little lady?"

• Exodus 22:25, Psalm 15:15, Proverbs 28:8, Ezekiel 18:13, 17, & 22:12 all forbid the use of banks or profiting from loans and investments.

How many LI’s ignore that? Churches are contstantly profiting from investments and much of the money that is given to them are from people who gained their money from investments. They are also not supposed to borrow money but they do that all the time for building projects and buying land.

They might use their old standby: “Well, those are all Old Testament scriptures. We are under a new covenant.” Translation: "Anything that we don’t like in the pesky rules section of the Old Testament can be ignored by claiming that Jesus erased all laws from the old covenant and replaced them with a new covenant. We know you won't bother to go look up what words like 'covenant' really mean or find out what the difference between the two are so you'll just have to take our word for it."

Two of my personal favorite mandates that LI’s ignore: stoning adulterers & killing disrespectful kids (though I’m sure many are tempted).

The way we read things literally in the Bible can seriously affect how we understand their meaning!

Proverbs 25:21-22 teaches “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”

LI’s might read this and think you can make things worse for your enemy by being nice to them because God will see that they are bad and you are good and you will get a special treat while they will be punished.

In the context of the culture and time period when this was written, fire was vital for survival. You cooked, cleaned, heated your home and used it for many chores and duties. If your fire went out, you had to go borrow burning coals from a neighbor. If you lived outside the walls of a city, your neighbor wasn’t going to be too close and you’d bring a metal container bundled in rags to carry on your head. To have a neighbor heap burning coals into that container was to have them share an act of kindness – like someone helping to pay your heating bill.

To heap live coals on a person's head is to make him ashamed of his hostility by surprising him with unconventional kindness. And out of his shame, he will feel a conviction about how he has treated people and have a change of heart. This brings God glory. God recognizes that you could have chosen to retaliate and repay evil with evil, but instead, you chose to show grace. And that makes Him want to reward you.

To study the times, the culture and the writers of the books of the Old and New Testaments is to grasp for deeper meaning and understanding of what their meanings are.

Think of it this way: If I was writing a book and I said that my friend was a 'space cadet', someone a thousand years from now who did not know that in my culture, we use that slang term to mean ditzy, they might think my friend was really a student trying to become an astronaut. But if the future person reading my book knows something of my culture, the correct meaning emerges and changes entirely.

To sum it all up: Even the LI’s don’t take everything literally if they have found a compelling reason. When faced with the concrete evidence that the earth was a sphere instead of flat, as they literally interpreted Genesis 1:2 to mean, they conceded the literal “it was without form” was not the correct interpretation.

Scriptures are meant to be inspiring, studied by individuals for their personal growth and used by God to speak to our hearts as individuals. Someone who wants to try to understand them should spend time learning about them and the history surrounding their formation, not listening to James Dobson on the radio and parroting everything he says because "he's a man of God."

The scriptures, no matter what they are, are never to be used as a legalistic tool for power-hungry people who want to force others to drink their Kool-Aid. Still, there will always be those people who are far too lazy to study for themselves, as the Bible commands in 2 Timothy 2:15:

"Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth."

Intro to this series: CLICK HERE

Next Week: "The Sin of Sodom?"

Lesbian Apologetics: A Bible Study

by: Sinnerviewer

Without going into detail about my life story, I at least want to start by saying I have had a 16 year experience steeped in evangelical Christianity. Part of me trying to “fix” myself was seeking some help from God. He didn’t “fix” me. One of my old pastors told me, as I was being branded an apostate, that it was because I didn’t pray sincerely enough. The truth, in fact, was that I spent every single day in prayer, often on my face in tears, begging for Him to make me "normal".

God didn't fix me because I wasn’t broken. God made me this way and He doesn’t make mistakes.

Sadly, my coming out involved my church announcing my "sin" in a public worship service that the leadership felt would be good to have my children attend. They weren’t even going to tell me about it. I found out and had my Dad take my kids to his cabin for the weekend so that they didn’t have to be there.


I knew I needed to know more about why these people, who all used to be very good friends of mine, were not only not speaking to me, but even lying about me in court so that I would lose custody of my kids. What makes them believe that being gay makes you a bad person and not fit to be a parent, even after those people used to say that I was the best mother they knew – one even asking me to take her 5 children in the event of her death? Why did they feel the need to disfellowship me in a public service instead of just letting me resign as a member?

I had a nice meeting one day with a sweet pastor of an open and affirming church. This pastor gave me a book by Daniel A. Helminiak called “What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality”. I was told that the book was a little bit “brainy” and “dry” but I did not find it that way. After all, I had been studying systematic theology for several years trying to make sense of my faith the way that the evangelical churches that I went to were presenting it.

Reading the book has given me a righteous indignation about how the Bible is continuously misinterpreted. Not only in the past, but right now and on a daily basis. It also makes me furious for God that so many people are too lazy to study the Bible for themselves, but believe what they hear being preached and then go act out the hatred that they are taught to perpetuate because they think they are pleasing God. They think that rejecting me and my friendship will please God because the "theology" they learn teaches them to ignore what Jesus called the second greatest commandment: to love others as much as you love yourself.

In a nutshell, the literal interpreters are extremely reluctant to accept any historical context if it changes a scripture’s meaning from what they are used to it being. When something doesn't fit a literal interpretation, they will use the historical/cultural context as an excuse not to take it literally (such as ignoring Jesus telling people to gouge out their eyes if they lust). Otherwise, if they can use it to their advantage, they will literally interpret.

An example: Genesis 1:1-2 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep: and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.”

These verses are what the early church used to justify burning “heretics” at the stake for trying to teach that the world was really round, not flat. The church argued that “the earth was formless” meant that it was flat. To admit that it might be round would have discredited them among the uneducated and they would lose power.

Now that we have proof that the earth is not flat, the church has accepted it as round and we no longer kill people for saying so. Still, they are not willing to accept new scientific or historical evidence that sheds light on certain scriptures because the meaning changes and it messes up their systematic theology and they would have to admit that they are not right about everything.

I am going to be writing a series of articles for you all to read about what their arguments are in the Bible against homosexuality. Then, I am going to show you why God loves you just the way you are and how you can have an intelligent debate that should get them to stop and think about what they believe and why they believe it. I will try to have them once a week until we work our way through each argument. I will be using a lot of this book as my jump-off point so if you’d like to read along, go grab yourself a copy and read along with me.

When we finish and you have kept up, you should be able to deliver some serious lesbian apologetics to any person who believes in a literal interpretation of scriptures. You should be able to, in a spirit of love, reach out to them and help them become more loving and gentle, just as Jesus would be. And if you can’t, at least you’ll force them to run back to their pastor (instead of their Bible) and ask some questions so that they don’t look like a fool again.

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